Steve Corbin is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
The prefix “pro-“ means to support a cause. The noun “life” is defined as an organism composed of cells that can grow, learn and respond to stimuli preceding death. It stands to reason that a pro-lifer is a radical proponent that from cell development until death -- everyone -- is supported. Everyone!
Most right-wing evangelicals and conservative Catholics proudly boast of being pro-life. MAGA Republican die-hards fondly recall a January 2020 March for Life rally where Donald Trump thanked participants for “making America the pro-family, pro-life nation.”
Simply stated, you cannot be pro-life unless you also support the 7.2 percent of babies who grow up to be LGBTQIA and – by the way – are living under the same canopy of heaven and with God’s divine grace.
LGBTQIA is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or questioning, intersex, asexual/aromantic/agender. One out of every 13 people you meet could be LGBTQIA (Gallup, Feb. 2023). Medical research is replete with evidence that 1.7 percent of human births are intersex (Journal of Sex Research), whereby the genitalia cannot be classified as female (XX chromosomes) or male (XY chromosomes). The Novo Nordisk Foundation reveals intersex children and their parents are not aware of the chromosome gene mutation until the child reaches puberty.
The LGBTQIA population breaks down – per Gallup research -- as follows:
1) 20.8 percent of Gen Z (age 20-26), 2) 10.5 percent of Millennials (age 27-42), 3) 4.2 percent of Gen Z (age 43-58), 4) 2.6 percent of Baby Boomers (age 59-77) and 5) 0.8 percent of Traditionalists (78 and older).
Seventy-nine percent of Americans want to protect LGBTQIA rights. Deniers of the LGBTQIA population probably don’t know – or if they do know shame on them -- repercussions of their “anti-“ stance. According to a 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, over 50 percent of transgender and non-binary kids have considered suicide and 93 percent say they worry about state laws denying transgender people access to gender-affirming medical care.
Research conducted by Child Trends revealed a statistically significant increase in mental health crisis text lines when anti-LGBTQIA legislation bills are introduced. LGBTQIA teens are five times more likely to make an attempt on their life than their straight peers. Negative actions and attitudes against LGBTQIA teenagers can have serious, life-altering consequences. This data should be a wakeup call for pro-lifers, especially if they value life and disdain suicide and mental health issues.
In October of 2018, Mr. Trump sought to reclassify people into an “unchangeable” category of male or female, which completely denies the existence of transgender and intersex people; a clear violation of human rights. I presume pro-lifers value human rights.
Organizations behind the anti-LGBTQIA legislation that’s been introduced in over 42 states include the conservative legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and the Christian nationalist (who despise all other religions and are anti-Semitic) lobby group Family Policy Alliance.
When 79 percent of Americans who support LGBTQIA rights witness evangelical parishioners and houses of worship tout anti-LGBTQIA beliefs, might this be one reason behind the decline of religious affiliation and church attendance?
Mayors, city council and school board members plus county, state and federal elected officials who took an oath of office to represent all citizens and are anti-LGBTQIA have betrayed the public’s trust and society’s soul. We the People – as per the Constitution -- should do our utmost to rid prejudice-laden politicians from serving unless they can represent 100 percent of their respective citizenry.
Pro-life citizens who are anti-LGBTQIA should seriously reflect on what Nelson Mandella – who devoted his life to the service of humanity -- once said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.